Interpretive Conventions

Transcription

1 Interpretive Conventions Published by Cornell University Press Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Project MUSE., For additional information about this book No institutional affiliation (6 Oct :21 GMT) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2 C H A P T E R O N E Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does).... It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism. Monroe C. Beardsley and W. K. Wimsatt, The Affective Fallacy However disciplined by taste and skill, the experience of literature is, like literature itself, unable to speak. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism A m erican literary theory has seen an explosion o f interest in readers and reading. There is talk o f implied readers, informed readers, fictive readers, ideal readers, mock readers, superreaders, literents, narratees, interpretive communities, and assorted reading audiences. T he term reader-response criticism has been used to describe a multiplicity o f approaches that focus on the reading process: affective, phenomenological, subjective, transactive, transactional, structural, deconstructive, rhetorical, psychological, speech act, and other criticisms have been indiscriminately lumped together under the label reader response. In these first two chapters I will bring some order into this metacritical chaos by comparing the most prominent models o f reading and the critical theories based on those models. T o do this, I will investigate the work o f the five reader-response critics who have been most influential in the United States: Stanley Fish, Norman Holland, David Bleich, W olfgang Iser, and Jonathan Culler. Out o f this investigation 19

3 Interpretive Conventions will come an agenda for developing a reader-oriented approach to American fiction study. Reader-Response Criticism'? All reader-response critics focus on readers during the process o f reading. Some examine individual readers through psychological observations and participation; others discuss reading communities through philosophical speculation and literary intuition. Rejecting the Affective Fallacy o f American New Criticism, all describe the relation o f text to reader. Indeed, all share the phenomenological assumption that it is impossible to separate perceiver from perceived, subject from object. Thus they reject the text s autonomy, its absolute separateness, in favor o f its dependence on the reader s creation or participation. Perception is viewed as interpretive; reading is not the discovery o f meaning but the creation o f it. Reader-response criticism replaces examinations o f a text in-and-of-itself with discussions o f the reading process, the interaction o f reader and text. Stanley Fish s early essay, Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics (1970) presented one influential version o f this reader-response criticism. Fish viewed a sentence in the text not as an object, a thing-in-itself, but an event, something that happens to, and with the participation of, the reader. His claims were aggressively descriptive: In my method o f analysis, the temporal flow is monitored and structured by everything the reader brings with him, by his competences; and it is by taking these into account as they interact with the temporal left-to-right reception o f the verbal string that I am able to chart and project the developing response. ^And the developing response was that o f the inform ed reader, a reader with the ability to understand the text and have the experience the author intended.^ In this 1. Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics, New Literary History, 2 (1970); rpt. in Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority o f Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 25, See Fish, Literature in the Reader, pp ; and two other articles by Fish: What Is Stylistics and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It? in Approaches to Poetics, ed. Seymour Chatman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), and Interpreting the Variorum,'" Critical Inquiry, 2 (1976), both rpt. in Is There a Text in This Class?: see esp. pp and

4 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models affective stylistics, Fish talked as if a text manipulated the reader the text forced the reader to perform certain cognitive acts and Fish, as practical critic, described that manipulative process. As a critical theorist Fish attacked formalist approaches, especially Am erican New Criticism, for ignoring what is objectively true about the activity o f reading. He claimed that his own approach was in contrast truly objective because it recognized the fluidity... o f the meaning experience and directed our attention to where the action is the active and activating consciousness o f the reader. ^ In a major reversal. Fish rejects these claims in Interpreting the Variorum'' (1976), where he argues that all texts are in fact constituted by readers interpretive strategies and that the process he form erly claimed to describe is actually a creation o f his critical theory: What my principles direct me to see are readers perform ing acts; the points at which I find (or to be more precise, declare) those acts to have been perform ed become (by a sleight o f hand) demarcations in the text; those demarcations are then available for the designation formal features, and as formal features they can be (illegitimately) assigned the responsibility for producing the interpretation which in fact produced them. ^ This radical revision o f Fish s theory has two consequences: a change in the relation o f reader to text and a change in the relation o f criticism to reading. Fish now claims that in reading the interpreter constitutes the text and that in reader criticism the interpreter s description constitutes the nature o f the reading process according to his interpretive strategies. Fish has moved from a phenomenological emphasis (which describes the interdependence o f reader and text) to a structuralist or even post-structuralist position (which studies the underlying systems that determine the production o f textual mean- 3. Fish, Literature in the Reader, p Fish, Interpreting the Variorum,'' p The introduction and headnotes to the essays reprinted in Fish s Is There a Text in This Class? provide the best discussion o f the course and consequences o f Fish s move from his earlier to his later critical theory. For a critique o f this move, see Steven Mailloux, Stanley Fish s Interpreting the Variorum'. Advance or Retreat? Critical Inquiry, 3 (1976), ; and for Fish s convincing response to this critique, see his Interpreting Interpreting the Variorum,' " same issue, rpt. in Is There a Text in This Class?, pp

5 SUBJECTIVISM PHENOMENOLOGY STRUCTURALISM reading conventions SO CIAL M O DEL strategies authority of interpretive communities David Bleich s subjective Norman Holland s transactive criticism Wolfgang Iser s phenomenological Stanley Fish s affective stylistics Jonathan Culler s structuralist poetics Stanley Fish s theory of interpretive primacy of transaction mter- text s subjectivity between action manipu- reader and between lation text within reader s identity reader and text of reader theme PSYCH O L O G IC A L M ODEL IN TERSU B JE CTIV E M ODEL

6 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models ing and in which the individual reader and the constraining text lose their independent status). In his metacriticism, Fish has given up making descriptive claims for his earlier critical approach and abandoned its absolute priority over formalist criticism. He now views affective stylistics as only one o f many possible interpretive strategies; it does not describe how all readers read but instead suggests one way they could read. Though Fish now holds it to be an act o f persuasion rather than objective description, he continues to use his earlier approach when he does practical criticism. He therefore occupies two places on the schema o f reader-response criticism shown in the chart. This schema locates each critic on a continuum o f readeroriented approaches. A detailed examination o f these approaches will reveal not only the interrelations among the critics placed here but also the problems within each o f their readerresponse theories. All five critics construct a theory consisting (in more or less detail) o f an account o f interpretation, a model for critical exchange, and a model o f reading. These critics theories o f interpretation try to account for meaning-production in both reading and criticism. Their models o f critical discussion specify the nature o f critical procedures (observation, description, explication, and explanation) and the ways interpretations are exchanged in critical dialogue. These hermeneutic theories and critical models are based on models o f reading, accounts o f how readers actually interact with the text during the temporal reading process. Norman Holland s work provides a useful starting point for the following discussions o f reader-response criticism because his writings carefully examine all three o f these components making up a critical theory.^ 5. I do not intend these three levels o f the critical enterprise to be exhaustive. For example, I have deliberately excluded a component for literary evaluation, since most reader-response critics find hierarchies o f literary values irrelevant to their descriptive projects. (But see Steven Mailloux, Evaluation and Reader Response Criticism: Values Implicit in Affective Stylistics, Style, 10 [1976], ) My purpose here is not to provide a detailed discussion of these three components of critical theory but to use this tripartite division as a loose framework for the analyses that follow. Cf. Leroy Searle, Tradition and Intelligibility: A Model for Critical Theory, New Literary History, 7 (1976), 402 and 415, n

7 Interpretive Conventions Transactive Criticism Holland s transactive criticism takes as its subject-matter, not the text in supposed isolation, as the New Criticism claimed it did, nor the self in rhapsody, as the old impressionistic criticism did, but the transaction between a reader and a text. T h e notion o f an identity theme is central to Holland s approach: we can be precise about individuality by conceiving o f the individual as living out variations on an identity theme much as a musician might play out an infinity o f variations on a single melody. A person brings this unchanging inner core o f continuity to all transactions between Self and Other, including reading.^ Holland s model o f reading proceeds from his more general theory o f the relation between personality and perception. Perception is a constructive act, not merely reflecting but form ing reality: the individual apprehends the resources o f reality (including language, his own body, space, time, etc.) as he relates to them in such a way that they replicate his identity. ^ That is, perception is also interpretation, and 'interpretation is a function of identity, specifically identity conceived as variations upon an identity theme. Holland particularizes this view o f perception in his central thesis about reading: identity re-creates itself. All o f us, as we read, use the literary work to symbolize and finally to replicate ourselves. We work out through the text our own characteristic patterns o f desire and adaptation. ^ Within this principle o f identity re-creation, Holland isolates four specific modalities, which he conveniently organizes under the acronym D EFT -defenses, expectations, fantasies, and transformations. One can think o f these four separate principles as emphases on one aspect or another o f a single transaction: shaping an experience to fit one s identity and in doing so, (D) avoiding anxiety, (F) gratifying unconscious wishes, (E) absorbing the event as part o f a sequence o f events, and (T) shap- 6. Norman N. Holland, Transactive Criticism: Re-Creation Through Identity, Criticism, 18 (1976), Holland, Unity Identity Text Self, PM LA, 90 (1975), 814; Transactive Criticism, p Holland, The New Paradigm: Subjective or Transactive? New Literary History, 7 (1976), Holland, Unity, p

8 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models ing it with that sequence into a meaningful totality. ^ T h e concept o f a meaningful totality or unity is pivotal for Holland s reading model (and is equally important in his general theory o f interpretation).^^ According to Holland, the reader makes sense o f the text by creating a meaningful unity out o f its elements. Unity is not in the text but in the mind o f a reader. By means o f such adaptive structures as he has been able to match in the story, he will transform the fantasy content, which he has created from the materials o f the story his defenses admitted, into some literary point or theme or interpretation. ^^ For Holland, meaning is the result o f this interpretive synthesis, the transformation o f fantasy into a unity which the reader fmds coherent and satisfying. As with all interpretation, the unity we find in literary texts is impregnated with the identity that finds that unity. Each reader creates a unity for a text out o f his own identity theme, and thus each will have different ways o f making the text into an experience with a coherence and significance that s a tis fie s.t h e r e fo r e, Holland s model o f reading accounts exceptionally well for varied responses. On the other hand, Holland s present theory has trouble with the phenom enon o f similar responses. Similarity was easily explained by his earlier model. In The Dynamics of Literary Response (1968), he spoke as if fantasies and their transformations were embodied in the literary work, as though the work itself acted like a m ind ; different readers could take in ( introject ) the 10. Holland, Transactive Criticism, p For other accounts o f DEFT, see Holland, Poems in Persons: A n Introduction to the Psychoanalysis o f Literature (New York: Norton, 1973), pp ; 5 Readers Reading (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), pp ; Unity, pp ; and The New Paradigm, p. 33^ 11. As Holland writes, ''Identity is the unity I find in a self if I look at it as though it were a text ' ( Unity, p. 815). He further explains that ''interpretation is a function o f identity, identity being defined operationally as what is found in a person by looking for a unity in him, in other words, by interpretation. We seem to be caught in a circular argument, but it is not the argument which is circular it is the human condition in which we cannot extricate an objective reality from our subjective perception of it ( Transactive Criticism, p. 340). 12. Holland, 5 Readers Reading, pp ; for a detailed description o f this transformational process, see Holland, The Dynamics o f Literary Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), chs. i-vi. 13. Holland, Unity, p. 816, emphasis added. 25

9 Interpretive Conventions same text and participate in whatever psychological process was embodied there. Accounting for recurrent responses has become much more difficult in Holland s revised model, in which processes like the transformation o f fantasy materials through defenses and adaptations take place in people, not in texts.no longer embodying psychological processes, autonomous texts no longer serve as a guarantee o f recurrence in Holland's present model o f reading. Instead, similar identity themes must somehow account for similar response.this psychological explanation contrasts with Fish s sociological ones. In Fish s earlier theory, all informed readers had the same basic reading experience because they shared linguistic and literary competence; in his present theory, communal reading strategies account for similar interpretive responses. T h e comparison between Fish s and Holland s reading models becomes more complex when we examine the precise status o f the text in their revised theories.^ Holland and Fish both claim that perception is a constructive act: we interpret as we perceive, or rather, perception is an interpretation. For Fish, interpretive. strategies constitute the text; not even as words-on-the-page does the text have any autonomy. As soon as we read, we interpret; and thus our interpretive strategies create the text that we later discuss in critical exchange. Holland seems to hold a similar view: A literary text, after all, in an objective sense consists only o f a certain config- 14. Holland, 5 Readers Reading, p. 19, and see Holland, A Letter to Leonard, Hartford Studies in Literature, 5 (1973), Cf. Holland, Unity, p. 815; the same identity theme may describe several different people. 16. The difference between Fish s and Holland s present models of reading is not that one accounts for similarities and the other for differences. Both models claim to account for both kinds o f response: shared interpretive strategies and similar identity themes explain recurrence, and different interpretive strategies and dissimilar identity themes account for variability. Rather, the relevant distinction here is the ability to account for unique, idiosyncratic responses. Holland s model allows the possibility of a unique personality and thus a unique interpretive response. Fish s present model denies the possibility of a unique interpretation because idiosyncratic interpretive strategies are impossible; strategies for making sense are always shared strategies, according to Fish see Is There a Text in This Classé, pp. 14, 335, 338. For how Fish s earlier model of reading accounted for differences and similarities in response, see ibid., pp. 4-6, 15 26

10 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models uration o f specks o f carbon black on dried wood pulp. When these marks become words, when those words become images or metaphors or characters or events, they do so because the reader plays the part o f a prince to the sleeping beauty. ^^ However, Holland runs into the same problem as Fish: if interpretation constitutes the text, what is the interpretation of? Fish throws up his hands: I cannot answer that question, but neither, I would claim, can anyone else, although formalists try to answer it by pointing to patterns and claiming that they are available independently o f (prior to) interpretation. ^^ Holland tries to solve the paradox but in so doing necessarily equivocates. In one place he writes, A reader reads something, certainly, but if one cannot separate his subjective response from its objective basis, there seems no way to find out what that something is in any impersonal sense.throughout Poems in Persons (1973), however, Holland constantly refers to raw materials in the text, which are presumed to be separate from the reader, not created by his interpretation during the reading process. The reader reaches into the poem and takes materials from it with which to achieve an experience within the characteristic pattern o f ego choices he uses to minimize anxiety and cope with reality. ^ Holland often gives these raw materials a status inconsistent with his emphasis on the reader s total domination o f the text s meaning. He mentions (but does not explain) constraints in the work^^ and speaks o f doing violence to the text.^^ For example, he writes that different builders can assemble the same stones into a building in many different ways, with more and less violence to the raw materials, just as different readers 17. Holland, 5 Readers Reading, p Fish, Interpreting the V a rio ru m,p ig. Holland, 5 Readers Reading, p Holland, Poems in Persons, pp , emphasis added. See also pp. 77, 96, 99, 117, 145, and Ibid., pp. 96, 148. Cf. Holland, 5 Readers Reading, p. 286: T o be sure, the promptuary [the structured language of the words-on-the-page] includes constraints on how one can put its contents together, but these constraints do not coerce anyone. The point to notice here is not that Holland claims constraints can be ignored (all critics admit this) but that he assumes constraints are in the text and need only be recognized (not created) by readers. 22. Holland, Poems in Persons, pp. 118, 146. Cf. Holland, 5 Readers Reading, pp

11 Interpretive Conventions can construct different experiences o f a poem, with more and less contortion o f the words and the plain sense.these references to raw materials, plain sense, and constraints all suggest a preexistent text independent o f a reader s interpretation and experience. Holland s discussions o f response in 5 Readers Reading (1975) also assume some aspects o f the text prior to interpretation; he often talks about elements of a story that are combined according to the reader s identity theme.he does not focus on how these elements (language, dialogue, character, plot) are constituted (are they in the text as raw materials or are they also constructed in the transaction?). H olland s discussion o f interpretation occurs at a higher level o f reader activity. That is, the story (as a combination o f preexistent elements) is re-created by the reader s identity through the modalities o f D EFT, and interpretation ( the making sense ) is a unity that the story takes on for the reader. Put another way, for Holland, meaning is the output o f a psychological process; the input to that process is the story. Like Holland, Fish believes that meanings are not extracted but made, but he claims further that the text is constituted (in all its aspects) by the interpretive process and is not prior to it.^^ Concerning the nature o f critical discussion, the form o f Fish s and H olland s arguments is the same; both use the interpretive 23. Holland, Poems in Persons, pp See, for example, Holland, 5 Readers Reading, pp perhaps a phrase such as elements in the story or materials of the story is merely what Holland calls a useful fiction (p. 19), for he writes in another place that the reader will try to make the language, events, or people he creates from the text function in multiple directions to work out the compromise among the demands of inner and outer reality that is his own style (p. 126, emphasis added). Still, he never qualifies such statements as: The difference [in experiences] comes from the differences in character. The sameness comes from the sameness in the resources used to create the experience (pp ). 25. Fish, Interpreting the Variorum,'' p In more recent formulations of his model, Holland continues to deny that the text limits response in any significant way but still writes that the literent [reader] builds a personal response by a personal use of the several elements o f the text, a response that the text may or may not reinforce. In a transactive model, I am engaged in a feedback loop (or, to be less technical, a dialogue) with the text. I bring schemata to bear on the text, and the text either does or does not reward them. (These statements are from Holland s exchange with Iser in Interview: Wolfgang Iser, ed. Rudolf E. Kuenzli, Diacritics, 10, No. 2 [1980], 58, 60.) 2<^

12 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models operations they describe for readers as explanations for the interpretive acts perform ed by critics. For Fish, critics interpret in their criticism in basically the same way they interpret as they read. Similarly, Holland views critics as simply another group o f readers operating under special stringencies ; in reading and criticism the process is the same: re-creation through identity.^ For Holland, the critic s interpretation is merely an extension o f the reader s interpretive synthesis. And since all interpretations express the identity themes o f the people making the interpretations, the interpretations by critics ( professional readers ) are also manifestations o f their identity themes. Since Fish and Holland agree that we do criticism in the same way that we read (that is, we use the same interpretive strategies in reading and criticism), their explanations o f recurrent responses carry over to their discussions o f critical consensus. Fish presents a sociological argument, Holland a psychological one. Fish moves from the community to its members, Holland from the individual to the group. Critics agree when they belong to the same interpretive community, says Fish; and interpretive communities are made up o f those who share interpretive strategies not for reading (in the conventional sense) but for writing texts, for constituting their properties and assigning their intentions. ^ Holland argues that critics agree when they can assimilate the others identity re-creations into their own. He implies that this agreement can take place either because two critics have similar identity themes or because two critics with widely divergent identity themes are still able to utilize each other s interpretations in their own re-creations. People distinguish different readings o f a text or personality objectively by how much and how directly they seem to us to bring the details o f a text or a self into convergence around a centering theme. We also compare them as to whether they feel right or make sense. That is, do we feel we could use them to organize and make coherent our own experience o f that text or person? ^ 26. Holland, A Letter to Leonard, p Holland, Unity, p. 816; 5 Readers Reading, p Cf. Holland, Poems in Persons, p Fish, Interpreting the Vanorum,'' p Holland, Unity, p Also see Holland, Poems in Persons, pp

13 Interpretive Conventions However, Holland again goes against the grain o f his theory by using raw materials in the text to help explain critical agreement. For example, in discussing a similar theme arrived at by three different readers, he argues that this consensus does not come about simply because the poem caused it, but because the three readers all took some o f the same elements from the poem to make up their individual syntheses. And again: We see consensus because different readers are using the same material. ^ In terms o f their overall critical projects, both Fish and Holland try to present compact conceptual frameworks. Their theories o f interpretation provide explanatory centers (interpretive communities or identity themes) which account for the acts o f reading, criticism, and critical exchange, though H olland s model o f reading has difficulty in consistently explaining similar responses and critical agreement. Subjective Criticism On several occasions David Bleich and Norman Holland have exchanged views on each other s work.^^ Their conversation in print at times proves especially illuminating not only for what it shows about the contrast between their two approaches, but also for how it illustrates their shared differences from other reader-oriented critics. In Readings and Feelings (1975), Bleich s model o f reading consists o f perception, affect, and association. Like Holland, Bleich holds that the perception o f the poem is a subjective reconstruction rather than a simple recording o f facts, and he sometimes discusses a reader s style o f perception, the forms o f individuated perception created by the particular biases o f the reader. A reader s report o f perception tells what he sees in the poem or what he thinks the poet says, while reports o f affective response describe the actual affect [fear. 30. Holland, Poems in Persons, pp See, for example, Holland, A Letter to Leonard, pp , The New Paradigm, pp , and 5 Readers Reading, p. 407, n. 52; David Bleich, Pedagogical Directions in Subjective Criticism, College English, 37 (1976), , and The Subjective Paradigm in Science, Psychology, and Criticism, New Literary History, 2 (1976), 332; and Norman N. Holland and David Bleich, Comment and Response, College English, 38 (1976),

14 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models satisfaction, indignation, etc.] he felt while reading the poem. ^^ Associative response embodies those aspects o f the reader s previous experience that are stimulated by the affect derived from his reading experience. Like most reader-response approaches, Bleich s subjective criticism places meaning in readers, not in texts. Bleich explicitly rejects the notion o f an objective text completely independent o f the reader, but he does not wrestle with the problematic relation o f interpretation to text during the reading process. Instead, he refers primarily to critical interpretation, an activity subsequent to the reading experience: For the reader, the interpretation is the response to his reading experience. Bleich s most recent book. Subjective Criticism (1978), presents the most detailed elaboration o f his views on interpretation and reading, and here Bleich is more consistent than Holland in developing the absolute priority o f individual selves as creators o f texts.however, this same rigorous consistency provides Bleich s theory with its own problems. For though Subjective Criticism is challenging in its pedagogical proposals and wideranging in its use o f interdisciplinary resources, it is ultimately incomplete as a hermeneutic project. The book outlines a fram ework for literary engagem ent that begins with the individual reader as the center o f critical concern. Bleich s model progresses from subjective response, to resymbolization, to negotiation resulting in validated knowledge. We need to examine each step in this model before considering the problems in Bleich s theory o f interpretation. On the level o f reading: Subjective response refers to an individual reader s first perceptual initiative toward a symbolic object (p. 96). W hen there are no prior utilitarian motives constraining these initiatives, response will be an act o f evaluative symbolization a combination o f perception and affect which serves as the basis for all further discussions o f the text (p. 98). 32. David Bleich, Readings and Feelings: A n Introduction to Subjective Criticism (Urbana, 111.: N C TE, 1975), pp Bleich, The Subjective Character o f Critical Interpretation, College En- glish, 36 (1975), Bleich, Subjective Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). All page citations in the text of this section refer to this book. 31

15 Interpretive Conventions In fact, for Bleich the text as symbolic object does not exist prior to or independent o f subjective initiative. It is only on the basis o f such individual subjective creations that interpretation can proceed. On the level o f criticism: T h e second stage in Bleich s model, resymbolization, occurs when the first acts o f perception and identification the subjective response or symbolization produce in the reader a need, desire, or demand for explanation (p. 39). Resymbolization is the conceptualization o f symbolized objects and processes in terms o f subjective motives (p. 88). In most cases, resymbolization is motivated and motivational explanation: it is motivated by the initial subjective response which requires an explanation, and it is motivational in that the explanation provided is in the form o f psychological motives. This individual resymbolization is commonly known as interpretation' (p. 67). In the third and most problematic stage o f Bleich s model, the level o f critical exchange, individual interpretations are negotiated within communities and new knowledge is produced. Negotiations in Bleich s classes, for example, begin with an individual student s response statement, which Bleich defmes as a symbolic presentation o f self, a contribution to a pedagogical community, and an articulation o f that part o f our reading experience we think we can negotiate into knowledge (p. 167). Response statements resymbolize individual reading experiences in terms o f perceptions, affects, and associations (as described in Readings and Feelings), and these resymbolizations are then negotiated into knowledge about language and literature. In discussing negotiation. Bleich writes that the synthesizing o f communal knowledge cannot begin without the substrate o f individual subjective knowledge (p. 151). This statement points to a problem area within Bleich s hermeneutic theory: the dynamics o f moving from the individual to the communal. Given the primacy o f the individual self as creator o f texts, how can Bleich s model account for agreement in negotiation? More specifically, if, as Bleich argues, texts are functions o f individual subjective initiatives, resymbolized on an individual basis, how can different subjectivities participate in a negotiating process? What is negotiated, and how? Since texts are individually consti- 52

16 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models tuted, readers might be able to share their resymbolizations in a kind o f show-and-tell ritual,but negotiation seems a rather misleading name for such a process because the term suggests some kind o f interpretive trade-off. Furthermore, following Bleich s logic, response statements must have the same ontological status as literary works: as texts, both are constituted by subjective initiative. In negotiation, then, there could be a different version o f each negotiator s response statement created by each o f his or her fellow negotiators, just as all the response statements represent (constitute) various versions o f the literary text (or reading experience). Each reader creates a different text, which when shared is constituted differently by different perceivers. If no text (either literary or critical) is prior to individual initiative, no negotiating process is comprehensible, let alone possible in practice. The strongest attempt that Bleich makes to resolve this hidden impasse is his explanatory use o f the concept o f motive. Within his theory, motives function as explanations o f subjective response in resymbolization and o f resymbolization itself. In both cases, motives serve as why s and not how s: a motive is a subjectively regulated cause and is the name for causes originating in human initiative (p. 44). Bleich also attempts to use motives to explain the dynamics o f negotiating resymbolizations, and, as I have noted, here is where he runs into problems: how to move from individually motivated responses to negotiated consensus. He attempts to bridge the gap by positing a category o f shared motives, such as a desire to reach consensus, a need for perceptual validation, or a goal o f self-enhancement. However, this move explains why negotiation occurs but not how it works. Unlike Thom as K uhn s paradigms or Fish s interpretive strategies (to which Bleich refers), motives cannot provide specific constraints for insuring the possibility o f shared interpretations. Bleich has, in fact, presented him self with an apparently impossible task: to account for interpretive agreement after having established the absolute primacy o f the individual as interpreter. This theoretical impasse is buried by his attempt to associate his 35. See, for example, Bleich, Subjective Criticism, p

17 Interpretive Conventions individualistic model o f reading with interpretive theories that have agreement built into them from the start. Bleich points to what he sees as theoretical analogues to negotiated consensus, first in K uhn s concept o f paradigm^ and then in Fish s notion o f interpretive community. Unfortunately, Bleich appears to misunderstand the social foundation o f the work by these theorists he takes to be his allies. Bleich at first seems well aware o f the social basis o f K uhn s notion o f paradigm, which Bleich defines as a shared mental structure, a set o f beliefs about the nature o f reality subscribed to by a group o f thinkers large enough to exercise leadership for those similarly wishing to observe and understand human experience (p. lo). Furthermore, he takes what I would call a maximally constitutive view o f Kuhn s central concept: a dom - inant paradigm does not simply guide the perception and investigation o f nature, it constitutes nature itself. This interpretation o f Kuhn s theory makes it look very much like Bleich s. Just as for Bleich there is no text prior to subjective response, for a maximally constitutive paradigm theory, there is no reality independent o f a paradigm. T h e paradigmatic perception o f reality at any moment in history is the reality at that time. The implication o f this thought is that for all practical purposes, reality is invented and not observed or discovered by human beings (p. ii). Bleich then proceeds to distort the social nature o f K uhn s paradigm theory in the following way. When Bleich speaks o f the socially subjective character o f knowledge (p. 25), he means consensually validated perception (p. 11). For Bleich, knowledge in general comes through synthesized interpretations (p. 33), that is, negotiated consensus. The common world o f sense, then, is determined by extended negotiation among perceivers (p. 20). Bleich believes Kuhn s position is essentially in agreement with his own on these matters. I do not think this is the case at all. Bleich talks about consensus reached after perception, but Kuhn emphasizes shared examplars prior to and constituting perception. Bleich s consensus is achieved after negotiation; K uhn s shared paradigms are what 36. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 34

18 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models make negotiations possible. In fact, K uhn s sociological theory directly contradicts Bleich s psychological model o f individuated perception. For Kuhn, initial perceptions are communal, not individual, with paradigms being shared by scientists (in the same community) from the start.if Bleich wants help explaining how individual subjective responses and resymbolizations become validated knowledge through negotiation, he will not find it in K uhn s theory o f paradigms. Nor will Fish s account o f interpretive communities provide the needed theoretical support. Bleich construes Fish s theory in a way Fish would not accept. Specifically, Bleich fails to realize that the communities he refers to are radically different from the interpretive communities Fish describes.^ In his later theory, Fish agrees with Bleich that there is no text prior to interpretation. For Fish, however, interpretation is a communal affair from the outset, constrained by shared interpretive strategies. Texts are constituted by interpretive communities, which consist o f interpreters who share ways o f reading (and therefore constructing) texts. For Bleich, communities are groups where negotiations o f resymbolizations take place; a community exists so that new knowledge can be synthesized in discussions. The interpretive communities Fish describes form the basis for such discussions; they provide the conditions necessary for the interpretive and persuasive acts that Bleich s negotiators perform. A single community (in Bleich s sense) can consist o f representatives from several interpretive communities (in Fish s sense). Fish s communities can include members not present (that is, interpreters who share strategies but are not members o f 37. At least during periods of normal science see Kuhn, pp In conversations that I have found very helpful, Bleich has suggested to me that his use o f Kuhn focuses not on periods of normal science but on periods o f paradigm revolutions, more exactly on the movement from paradigm uncertainty to new paradigm acceptance. Even here, however, I think Bleich and Kuhn are talking about two radically different processes. For Kuhn, a new paradigm becomes established not through Bleich s two-way negotiation but through one-way persuasion in which holders o f the new paradigm (sometimes) convert holders of the old and no new-paradigm holders seem to be converted back to the old paradigm see Kuhn, pp Bleich discusses Fish s theory in Subjective Criticism, pp

19 Interpretive Conventions Bleich s discussion group). Thus, interpretive communities cannot be viewed simply as physical groupings o f individuals with similar concerns (p. 125); rather they are constitutive o f the discussions taking place within those groupings. For Bleich, M LA meetings, classrooms, and journal forums are the communities in which individuals come to consensus (or fail to achieve it).^^ For Fish, such physical spaces have little to do with the set o f members composing interpretive communities; membership in an interpretive community is not determ ined by proximity or similar concerns, but by shared ways o f interpreting. Consensus can then be seen as the agreement articulated in critical discussion; shared interpretive strategies assure that agreement, providing the foundation for its recognition. As with K uhn s concept o f paradigms. Bleich misses an essential point about Fish s notion o f interpretive communities. Bleich cannot use either o f these sociological theories to support his attempt to move from individual subjectivities to group consensus, because agreement is built into these theories from the start as it can never be in Bleich s psychological account. Negotiation as ongoing accomplishment and consensus as achieved goal remain unexplained in Bleich s interpretive theory. I have discussed these two examples o f misunderstanding at such length because I believe they are symptomatic o f Bleich s central theoretical problem. His discussions o f Kuhn and Fish unintentionally disguise a theoretical impasse which, if it continues unacknowledged and unresolved, will undermine the most important goal o f Subjective Criticism. That goal is a bold one: to reinscribe the organized discussion o f literature within a discourse that aggressively advocates the freedom o f the individual self in a pedagogical community. Bleich s approach to teaching places the individual student and his subjective response at the center o f literary study. Subjective criticism assumes that each person s most urgent motivations are to understand himself, Bleich writes in his final paragraph. These pedagogical premises challenge teachers to reevaluate their notions o f authority, to reexamine their attitudes toward their stu- 39. See Bleich, Negotiated Knowledge o f Language and Literature, Studies in the Literary Imagination, 12, No. 1 (197g),

20 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models dents, and to redefine their rationales for teaching literature. Such challenges raise basic questions that deserve serious consideration. Unfortunately, such consideration may be withheld because a problematic theory o f interpretation supports Bleich s pedagogical program. T h e problems in his account o f negotiation need to be resolved before discussions o f his challenging proposals for teaching can proceed.'^ Bleich shares with Holland this pedagogical focus, which distinguishes both o f their theories from those o f Iser, Fish, and Culler.However, Bleich and Holland have found many places to disagree over their respective theoretical projects. For example, Bleich views the subjective/objective distinction as absolute and therefore criticizes Holland s transactive paradigm, which denies that absoluteness. Holland claims that objective reality and pure experience are themselves only useful fictions, vanishing points we approach but never reach. The problem, then, is not to sort out subjective from objective but to see how the two 40. Since the publication of Subjective Criticism, Bleich appears to have recognized some of the problems with the concept of negotiation but not the particular issues I have raised in this section; see Bleich, Negotiated Knowledge, p. 75, n. 1. In conversation he has pointed out to me that he considers Subjective Criticism as a first attempt to establish an area o f study and understand it, and he feels it already looks forward to further examinations o f how the individual relates to the social, especially in terms of language, e.g., see Subjective Criticism, pp. 265 and See, for example, Holland, 5 Readers Reading, pp , and Holland and Murray Schwartz, The Delphi Seminar, College English, 36 (1975), , Long before either Bleich or Holland began working on the problem, Louise Rosenblatt argued for the pedagogical relevance of the reader s individual experience o f literature. See Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration (New York: Appleton-Century, 1938); the third edition (1976) is presently distributed by the Modern Language Association. In her most recent book, Rosenblatt is critical of aggressively subjective approaches to reading (presumably Bleich s and Holland s) and argues that her transactional view, while insisting on the importance o f the reader s contribution, does not discount the text and accepts a concern for validity o f interpretation Louise M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory o f the Literary Work (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p Though it puts greater emphasis on the individuality of reading experiences, Rosenblatt s transactional theory more closely resembles Iser s phenomenology than Holland s and Bleich s psychological perspectives. Perhaps this is because Rosenblatt s work derives from that of William James, to whom Edmund Husserl expressed indebtedness (see Rosenblatt, The Reader, p. 1 iin.), and because Husserl s phenomenology is the ultimate source (by way of Ingarden) for Iser s theory. For Bleich s comments on Rosenblatt s work, see Subjective Criticism, pp

21 Interpretive Conventions combine when we have experiences. ^^ Bleich rejects this view and criticizes Holland s assumptions and formulations which continue to try to appease the demands o f objectivity. ^^ For Bleich, Holland is simply not subjective enough. Nonetheless, despite their differences, Holland and Bleich can be grouped together in that they define their critical paradigm (subjective or transactive) from a psychological perspective (not a sociological one). T h ey emphasize the individual over the group; reading is a function o f personality, not shared strategies. Furthermore, Bleich and Holland both study the reported responses o f readers in developing their theories. As Holland remarks, it is the close analysis o f what readers actually say about what they read that differentiates readerresponse critics like himself and Bleich from those like Iser and Fish (and he could have included Culler as well).^^ T he kind o f critical project that Holland and Bleich advocate runs counter to the dominant activities o f American literary study. Practical criticism, for example, currently depends on intersubjective theories o f literature which make possible critical consensus and validity in interpretation; while textual scholarship requires a communication model o f reading which assumes the availability o f authorial intention. As I have shown in this chapter, both Holland and Bleich have difficulties providing this intersubjective basis for reading and criticism: Holland lapses into assertions about a preexistent text that contradict the thrust o f his theory, and Bleich, who is more consistent in assuming individual readers as creators o f texts, cannot move convincingly from individual response to group consensus. Furthermore, both Holland and Bleich explicitly reject any communication model for reading. Holland argues that interpretation is not decoding. Each reader constructs meaning as part o f his own artistic experience---- He does not recover some preexisting intention latent in the w ork. ^^ A nd Bleich s logic o f interpre- 42. Holland, Poems in Persons, p Bleich, The Subjective Paradigm, p. 332; and see Bleich, Subjective Criticism, pp Holland, Unity, p. 882, n Holland, Poems in Persons, p. 117; cf. p. 99: The poet does not speak to 35

22 Literary Theory and Psychological Reading Models tation excludes consideration o f whether and how the author is communicating anything to us. ^^ Without an intersubjective foundation or a communication model, Holland and Bleich s psychological approach to reader-response criticism will have a very difficult time influencing the institutional study o f literature. the reader directly so much as give the reader materials from which to achieve the poem in his own style. See similar claims in Holland, 5 Readers Reading, pp Holland has presented some alternatives to traditional practical criticism in his self-conscious transactions o f literary texts in Hamlet My Greatest Creation, Journal o f the American Academy o f Psychoanalysis, 3 (1975), ; Transacting My Good-Morrow or. Bring Back the Vanished Critic, Studies in the Literary Imagination, 12, No. 1 (1979), 61-72; and Re-Covering The Purloined Letter : Reading as a Personal Transaction, in The Reader in the Text, ed. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp ; and with others, Holland presents a collective transaction of a poem in Poem Opening: An Invitation to Transactive Criticism, College English, 40 (1978), Bleich, Subjective Criticism, pp ; and see pp. 89, 93; also cf. pp. 259, on The Conception and Documentation of the Author. 39